Harvey Deutschendorf’s take on the importance of Emotional Intelligence

Harvey Deutschendorf is an emotional intelligence expert and internationally published author of The Other Kind of Smart, Simple Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence for Greater Personal Effectiveness and Success, published by AMACOM of New York. www.theotherkindofsmart.com

Harvey is passionate about emotional intelligence and has spoken frequently on the topic including a number of keynote addresses. He lives in Edmonton, Canada and enjoys spending time hiking in the Canadian Rockies, jazz music, red wine, reading, writing and spending time with family and friends.

1. A few tips to improve personal emotional intelligence?

To build healthy relationships with others:

• Ask people questions about themselves. It shows you are interested and most people love to talk about themselves

• Become a better listener. Pay attention to the amount of time you talk and the amount of time you listen. If you find you spend more than 50% of your time talking strive to spend more listening.

To increase happiness

• Keep a gratitude book. Every morning before starting your day write in 10 things you are grateful for.

• Help someone less fortunate than yourself

• Call someone you haven’t spoken to in a while just to see how they are doing

2. Is emotional quotient as important as intelligence quotient?

Many studies have shown that emotional quotient is more important than intelligence quotient to our success, not only on our workplaces but in our homes. Yale Business School is the latest business school to start testing applicants for emotional intelligence as well as high school grades. Many leadership programs in North America have emotional intelligence as part of the training. While most of the research has been carried out in business circles, there has been some studies showing that people with higher emotional intelligence have better relationships with their partners and are generally happier with their lives.

3. Tell us a bit about your book and sources of inspiration for it?

I became very excited about emotional intelligence (EI) when I first read Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence, Why It Can Matter More than IQ. Even though I believed I was smart (I did well in school and my teachers told me I was smart), my life was not going too well. I did not have the job, the relationships or friends that I wanted. In EI I saw the answers to why I wasn’t doing as well as I thought I should be. I threw myself into learning as much about emotional intelligence as I could, took training, reading and began to speak about it. I resolved to change my life and joined a men’s support group that helped men work through emotional issues. At the end of talks that I gave, people often came up and asked me if I could recommend a book that was easy to read and could give them some ways to use emotional intelligence. I couldn’t recommend any, as they all seemed to be academic, or totally business oriented, long on concepts and theory, but short on practicality. I decided that I would have to write a book that would let the average person easily understand EI and be able to use it in their lives right away.

4. Can connectivity based on emotions enhance our awareness and in turn, our emotional intelligence?

Absolutely, the first step in increasing our emotional intelligence is to be aware of our own emotions and how they impact others around us. Our first reaction to our environment is always through our feelings. We feel before we think, therefore our connectivity to others is based upon how they made us feel. As Maya Angelou stated “We often forget what others said, but never how they made us feel.” Being aware and conscious of this at all times can lead to better relationships in all aspects of our lives from the workplace to our families and friends. On a larger scale, the more people practice this around the globe, the greater our chance for achieving world peace and harmony amongst nations and people.

5. What is the future of the self help industry?

As a result of the large amount of attention that has been paid to the self help industry over the past several decades; I believe that people are becoming more aware of the need to take responsibility for their own lives. Over the last few decades more and better tools have become available for people to use to better themselves. I see a future in which greater numbers of people will spend more time and effort in developing their own lives and potential. Changing our lives for the better requires commitment, dedication, discipline and hard work. The danger I see in the increasing amount of information easily available in the self help world is that some people will look for an easy solution that requires little effort on their part. The Secret is a good example. While the insights on the thinking required to reach our potential was very insightful and useful, some people did not realize that action and effort on their part were also necessary. They thought they would be able to obtain everything they wanted by just listening to or watching The Secret every day.

In the future I see more programs available to assist people in their change process from beginning to end, through courses, online teaching and coaching.

I also see a change in global consciousness happening in which people are attempting to connect through a higher energy or spiritual awareness. As people become more aware of themselves the next step will be to strive for awareness on a higher level of consciousness. I expect that we will see a great increase in the self help industry in these next several decades in the information and help available to people to help them connect at this higher level of consciousness.